I went on, past the grand wrought-iron greenhouses, giant palms pushing against the glass, as more joggers entered the park. Jogging across the road and into the Jardin des Plantes, I stopped to photograph another entirely unanticipated, and very different, unknown: a zoological enclosure holding a group of incredibly cute red-necked wallabies, mobbing together in a slice of sun. View image in fullscreen Jardin des Plantes. Square, Moorish in style and 33 metres tall, it glowed in the light, its tiles of geometric motifs dazzling in green, peach and white. It was a crisp, clear winter day and, rounding a corner, I saw the first unexpected sight of the day: sunshine hitting the sand-coloured minaret of the Grande Mosquée de Paris, inspired by the Al-Zaytuna mosque in Tunisia. The mosque glowed, its tiles of geometric motifs dazzling in green, peach and whiteįor this stay, I made my base the 5th arrondissement, close to the Sorbonne, and on the first morning, with the weather on my side (the hotel receptionist told me how lucky I was, as it had been “raining for days”), I set out for a jog. None was especially hidden or secret, but they were novel to me. Photograph: Marc Domage/Fondation Louis VuittonĪs with any successful travel experience, the real gems tend to be the “unknown unknowns” – those stumbled on, not anticipated, beforehand. Oliver is a proud member of ASCAP and The Dramatists Guild.View image in fullscreen The Mark Rothko show at Foundation Louis Vuitton runs until 2 April 2024. He was selected for Jeanine Tesori’s Front & Center Master Class and American Theatre Wing’s “Pitching Your Show” Master Class, and is an alum of the ASCAP Musical Theatre Workshop, the BMI Advanced Musical Theatre Workshop and the Johnny Mercer Songwriters Project. Oliver is a Jonathan Larson Grant finalist, and his work was a finalist for the O’Neill Musical Theatre Conference and one of three finalists for the 2022 Relentless Award, the largest prize presented to an unproduced musical. Oliver has developed work at the Ucross Foundation, the KHN Center for the Arts, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Rhinebeck Writers Retreat, the Goodspeed Musicals Writers Grove and the Warren Miller Center for the Arts. Winner of the inaugural Stephen Schwartz Award, the ASCAP Foundation Sammy Cahn Award and a Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship, Oliver Houser (he/him) has headlined at the Kennedy Center and presented his musicals at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the Village Theatre, the National Alliance for Musical Theatre Conference (NAMT), the SoHo Playhouse, Nashville Rep, the New York Musical Festival, the New York International Fringe Festival, the Other Palace Theatre in the UK, London’s Royal Academy of Music and beyond. If you don’t know where to start, here is a funny song, here is a life-affirming song, here is a song about loss, a song about longing, a song about love, a song about childhood, and a song about the journey of life. I love connecting with people and will be very happy to hear from you. I’d be delighted to add you to my newsletter, which you can sign up for here. I am also proud to work with Musicians on Call, an organization that helps bring the healing power of music to hospital patients’ bedsides. In addition to writing, I love leading an original corporate team-building experience, Create Your Theme Song, which inspires laughter, meaning and connection through collaborative songwriting. Also in development is A Whisper Called Freedom, a musical comedy inspired by a real experience I had being in a cult. Works include XY, an original musical inspired by my journey to embrace my identity as an intersex man, and She Reached for Heaven, inspired by Johann Hari’s TED Talk, “Everything You Know About Addiction Is Wrong,” which posits the opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety, it’s connection. Having survived a near-death experience at birth, I am inspired to harness the power of storytelling and music to help illuminate to others the gift of life, and the beauty and innocence of our shared humanity. I am an intersex musical theatre writer and songwriter, passionate about creating original life-affirming work that opens hearts and minds and facilitates healing and connection.
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